God Who Sees

For Genesis 21:9-21, I'm reposting a piece from the Invisible Woman series

 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. ² So Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. ³ Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. (Genesis 16: 1-3)

God had promised Abram and Sarai that they would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and grains of sand on the beach.  But by Genesis 16, Abram was nearly 80,  Sarai was ten years younger but still very post-menopausal, and they had no children.  But they did have a north African servant girl named Hagar. 

Law and custom permitted the lady of a great household to use a female servant as a surrogate mother.  The servant girl was supposed to lose legal rights to her biological child which the boss-lady would raise as her own.  Genesis 30:1-12 notes that of the patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel were the product of similar arrangements.  You could call it servant surrogacy, or arranged marriage and adoption, or you could call it sexual exploitation of underclass and denial of their parental rights.  Whatever the terminology, Hagar got pregnant by her boss’s husband, ,who was her boss, and also now her husband, too (Genesis 16:3-4).

The shocking, surprising, and absolutely inevitable result of an old lady putting a young lady in bed with her husband ---- was drama. 

“When [Hagar]saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes.”  Hagar got a permanent attitude, but Sarai wasn’t about to put up with an uppity servant girl, sister-wife or not. 

Genesis 16:5-6

Sarai to Abram:  This is all YOUR fault.  Now, I swear to God you better do something about this little girl. 

Abram to Sarai:   She works for YOU.  Do whatever you want.  Just leave me out of it.
Abram to himself (in a Danny Glover whisper):  I’m getting to old for this dung.

84% of homeless women had been physically or sexually abused.  HALF of all homeless women report that domestic violence was the IMMEDIATE CAUSE of their homelessness.

By the  end of Genesis 16:6, Hagar was pregnant, alone, and homeless, fleeing an abusive household in which her rich baby’s daddy had done nothing for her but get her pregnant.

Yeah, I know.  This ancient Bible stuff doesn’t relate to what happens in the modern world.  (Insert sarcastic eye-roll)

67% of the victims of the women who are seriously injured by their abusers never seek medical treatment.  Let me rephrase that: 2/3 of the women who are wounded by their abusers hide their wounds, and that is part of the problem.  Victims of domestic abuse feel invisible.  Our culture treats the victims of domestic abuse as if they are invisible.

They are not invisible.  Not to every one. 

Hagar was alone, homeless, and pregnant with no midwife and no community of women to look after her (i.e., no healthcare), but she was not invisible ---- to God.  God met Hagar in her distressed and disclosed to her a plan, a Divine plan to protect her and to prosper the legacy that would be realized in her yet unborn son (Genesis 16: 11, 12).  

Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?” (Genesis 16:13)

 

God saw Hagar. 

She was not invisible.

Hagar returned to the home of her abusers.  Not surprising.   On average, it takes a victim seven times to leave before staying away for good. 

Years later, Genesis 21:1-19 explains, after the child promised to Sarah was born, Abraham conceded

to his first wife and evicted Hagar and her son Ishmael.  Hagar, now a single mother, again homeless,
 unable to provide for her teenage son. 

But, God was still the God who sees.  Hagar was still not invisible.

The Lord had gotten her out of the abusive home for good, and now the God-Who-Sees “opened her eyes,” so that she could see how to survive, how to provide for her son without compromising her dignity, how to not just survive, but SUCCEED.  The God-Who-Sees invisible women, transformed an abused, abandoned, homeless single mother into the patriarch of a great nation.  

Genesis 25:16 says that Ishmael had 12 sons who were “twelve princes.”  Abraham wouldn’t have 12 male heirs for 2 more generations.  And, because God invented irony, when Abraham’s 12  descendants turned on their brother Joseph, they tried to sell him to Hagar’s descendants (Genesis 37:25-27).

The abused and abandoned women are NOT INVISIBLE.  God sees.  God saves.  God has, can, and will do great things for them.

The mother on the street, again.  The sister whose last boyfriend put his hands on her like boyfriend before him.  The woman and child pleading because they CAN'T go back again: God sees them.  

If we truly serve God, we will open our eyes and see them, too.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (Genesis 16; 21)

 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. ² So Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. ³ Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. (Genesis 16: 1-3)

God had promised Abram and Sarai that they would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and grains of sand on the beach.  But by Genesis 16, Abram was nearly 80,  Sarai was ten years younger but still very post-menopausal, and they had no children.  But they did have a north African servant girl named Hagar. 

Law and custom permitted the lady of a great household to use a female servant as a surrogate mother.  The servant girl was supposed to lose legal rights to her biological child which the boss-lady would raise as her own.  Genesis 30:1-12 notes that of the patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel were the product of similar arrangements.  You could call it servant surrogacy, or arranged marriage and adoption, or you could call it sexual exploitation of underclass and denial of their parental rights.  Whatever the terminology, Hagar got pregnant by her boss’s husband, ,who was her boss, and also now her husband, too (Genesis 16:3-4).

The shocking, surprising, and absolutely inevitable result of an old lady putting a young lady in bed with her husband ---- was drama. 

“When [Hagar]saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes.”  Hagar got a permanent attitude, but Sarai wasn’t about to put up with an uppity servant girl, sister-wife or not. 

Genesis 16:5-6

Sarai to Abram:  This is all YOUR fault.  Now, I swear to God you better do something about this little girl. 

Abram to Sarai:   She works for YOU.  Do whatever you want.  Just leave me out of it. 
Abram to himself (in a Danny Glover whisper):  I’m getting to old for this dung.

84% of homeless women had been physically or sexually abused.  HALF of all homeless women report that domestic violence was the IMMEDIATE CAUSE of their homelessness.

By the  end of Genesis 16:6, Hagar was pregnant, alone, and homeless, fleeing an abusive household in which her rich baby’s daddy had done nothing for her but get her pregnant.

Yeah, I know.  This ancient Bible stuff doesn’t relate to what happens in the modern world.  (Insert sarcastic eye-roll)

67% of the victims of the women who are seriously injured by their abusers never seek medical treatment.  Let me rephrase that: 2/3 of the women who are wounded by their abusers hide their wounds, and that is part of the problem.  Victims of domestic abuse feel invisible.  Our culture treats the victims of domestic abuse as if they are invisible.

They are not invisible.  Not to every one. 

Hagar was alone, homeless, and pregnant with no midwife and no community of women to look after her (i.e., no healthcare), but she was not invisible ---- to God.  God met Hagar in her distressed and disclosed to her a plan, a Divine plan to protect her and to prosper the legacy that would be realized in her yet unborn son (Genesis 16: 11, 12).  

Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?” (Genesis 16:13)

 

God saw Hagar. 

She was not invisible.

Hagar returned to the home of her abusers.  Not surprising.   On average, it takes a victim seven times to leave before staying away for good. 

Years later, Genesis 21:1-19 explains, after the child promised to Sarah was born, Abraham conceded

to his first wife and evicted Hagar and her son Ishmael.  Hagar, now a single mother, again homeless,
 unable to provide for her teenage son.  

But, God was still the God who sees.  Hagar was still not invisible.

The Lord had gotten her out of the abusive home for good, and now the God-Who-Sees “opened her eyes,” so that she could see how to survive, how to provide for her son without compromising her dignity, how to not just survive, but SUCCEED.  The God-Who-Sees invisible women, transformed an abused, abandoned, homeless single mother into the patriarch of a great nation.  

Genesis 25:16 says that Ishmael had 12 sons who were “twelve princes.”  Abraham wouldn’t have 12 male heirs for 2 more generations.  And, because God invented irony, when Abraham’s 12  descendants turned on their brother Joseph, they tried to sell him to Hagar’s descendants (Genesis 37:25-27).

The abused and abandoned women are NOT INVISIBLE.  God sees.  God saves.  God has, can, and will do great things for them.

The mother on the street, again.  The sister whose last boyfriend put his hands on her like boyfriend before him.  The woman and child pleading because they CAN'T go back again: God sees them.  

If we truly serve God, we will open our eyes and see them, too.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

INVISIBLE WOMEN, part 3 of 3: "Treat Her Like a Lady"

First off, the Bible only directs wives to submit to their legal husbands NOT women as a species to submit to men in general.  The Bible does not grant  men in general authority over women in general.  Historically, men dominated all institutions, and the Bible faithfully records that tradition. But, except for fathers and husbands, God never COMMANDS women to submit to all men. 

 Also, and this is critically important, the Bible only talks about a wife submitting to her husband (as, Ephesians 5;21, they submit to one another), NEVER about a girlfriend submitting to her boyfriend.
As my wife has been known to explain, “You ain’t my daddy and you ain’t my husband.” As, I’ve been known to explain, “You other dudes can kick rocks.”

And as for husbands: in his letter to the Colossian church, Paul, the bachelor who had a low personal opinion of marriage, was compelled by the Holy Spirit to issue this command:   Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them (3:19).

Let me rephrase that.

GOD said that men are not allowed to be mean to our wives.

In the Old Testament book of Malachi, God rebuked His people for their idolatry, and corruption, but then God turned and said, “And let Me tell you another thing you do that REALLY ticks Me off!   You come to church crying at the altar, praying and begging.  But I don’t listen.  And you’re like ‘Why?  Why won’t God listen to our prayers?’ And I’m like ‘Because I see how you mistreat your wives.’ “

And this is the second thing you do: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and crying; so He does not regard the offering anymore, nor receive it with goodwill from your hands.

Yet you say, “For what reason?”

Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously.  Yet she is your companion And your wife by covenant. (Malachi 2: 13, 14)

GOD SAID that it pisses Him off when husbands mistreat their wives. 

It’s a sin for a man to abuse or wrong his wife.  Literally a sin.  A sin so terrible, so personally offensive to God, that when a man does his wife wrong, God doesn’t even want to hear that man’s prayers.  And just in case you missed that in the Old Testament, God repeated it in the New Testament. 

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3:7)

Peter, a husband and Jesus' closest personal friend, asserted that my eternal inheritance is somehow tied to how good I am to my wife.   God commands me to try to understand Sheila. God requires me to honor her. 

Point blank, a husband who mistreats his wife jeopardizes his relationship with God. 

. . . Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. (Malachi 2: 15)

So, there is no way that the same God who said, “Don’t even talk to me if you’re being mean to your wife,” is O.K. with domestic abuse.  There is no way, that “submit to your husband” means let that dude beat you up.   There is no way that God intended being the head of your family to  mean hitting your wife upside the head.     

God used  Paul the bachelor to command husbands to love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.

We yell so much over the submit verses that we don’t hear God telling husbands to treat their wives like they want to be treated.

So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.  (Ephesians 5:28, 29)

No dude wants to be beaten up or degraded.  So ---- don’t do that to women.  GOD SAID, “Don’t do that to women.”

No man wants to be bankrupted by his spouse or left to care for his children without the means to provide for them.  So GOD SAID, “Don’t do that to women.”

But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Timothy 5:8)

Wives are God’s gift to men.  (Bro, if you picked up the wrong one, I’m sorry but that’s your fault.)  As with all Divine gifts I am steward of my wife’s heart for a time, but at the end of time I’m required to present Sheila to God in better condition that I received her.  That’s another part of Ephesians 5 we skip over.

. . . that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:27)

(And no, that verse does not require husbands to cover plastic surgery or botox.)

Yes, many men abuse women.  And, yes, way too frickin’ many of them are professed Christians.  But.  BIBLICAL Christianity prohibits domestic abuse.  GOD clearly, explicitly, and repeatedly commands men to be good, Christ-like husbands who protect the bodies of their wives, provide for them, and love them with the understanding and grace that Jesus showed to us. 

Any man who does otherwise and calls himself a Christian is lying on God.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation. Or, by clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064 

INVISIBLE WOMAN, part 2: "The Levite's Concubine"

True story.

So, this preacher was married.  Well, he wasn’t really MARRIED, she was his live-in girlfriend/ common law wife, but they were in love.  Except she cheated on him ----- a lot.  Then she got mad at him for being mad at her for cheating on him --- a lot---- so she moved back to her daddy’s house.  So, the preacher went to her daddy’s house, and he was all, “Baby, please.  Come back, baby please, baby please,” and his girlfriend’s (ex-common law wife’s?) dad was like, “Look, son.  You can stay here for a few days while ya’ll work this out.”  So the dad and the preacher spent 3 days getting drunk together.  Three days turned into four.  Four days turned into five.  On the 6^th day, the preacher was like, “No more.  No more.  Man, we gotta go.”  So, the very hung-over preacher and his ex-ex girlfriend left to resume living together.

And that is Judges chapter 19, verses 1-10.

The same social drama, the same unrepentantly un-Biblical behaviors and relationship that we think novel and particular to our post-modern Western culture were the norm in Israel 1300 years before Jesus was born.   The guiding philosophy of that kind of culture is summarized in the last verse of the book Judges:  In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

No one recognized objective ethical authority.  Every one believed they had a right to live and lust however they saw fit, and legally, they did.  There was no statutory authority (no king) prohibiting their behavior, but the absence of legal consequence didn’t eliminate moral and spiritual consequences. 

Providing hospitality, including short term lodging, to travelers was a basic expectation in ancient Israelite culture, but social norms were so corrupted and inverted in the era of Judges that the Levite and his concubine couldn’t find lodging for days, until an old Benjamite took them in. 

A mark of a broken culture is when basic human decency is the rare exception instead of the rule,

when being polite is so rare that we make memes to restore our faith in humanity. 

How bad does a society without a moral center become?   It gets Judges 19:22-30 bad.  When the men in town learned that they had visitors, some of them went to the old man’s house and asked to see the preacher ---- so they could rape him.  After negotiations, the men “settled” for brutally gang-raping the preacher’s girlfriend.   She died.

She died.

The next morning, her boyfriend the Levite, the preacher, the man who’d loved her so much that even though she’d cheated on him he still pleaded for restoration of their relationship ---- he stepped over her broken body and said, “Get up and let us be going” (verse 28).

He handed her over to be brutalized in his place and then he stepped over her.  Because he had somewhere else to be.

But, he didn’t forget about her.  No.  He took her body home where he cut her up into 12 pieces and mailed those pieces to each of the other tribes.  It was the bloody 1300 B.C. equivalent of recording a crime and posting it on Youtube.    Nobody could ignore the events in Gibeah because now

everybody had visible evidence of  what had happened. 

There was a national investigation. 

Then the children of Israel said, “Tell us, how did this wicked deed happen? (Judges 20:3)

The nation demanded justice. 

Then the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, “What is this wickedness that has occurred among you? ¹³ Now therefore, deliver up the men, the perverted men who are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and remove the evil from Israel! (Judges 20:12, 13)

And the local courts said, “We won’t prosecute.”

But the children of Benjamin would not listen to the voice of their brethren, the children of Israel. (Judges 20: 13b)

Instead the community around the guilty men banded together and launched a counter-campaign. 

Instead, the children of Benjamin gathered together from their cities to Gibeah, to go to battle against the children of Israel. (Judges 20: 14)

There was a war.  65,000-plus soldiers died.  Dozens of villages were burned.  Uncounted thousands were displaced.  Basically, it was attempted internal genocide.  But it wasn’t just the guilty men and their enabling tribe who suffered.  God punished the entire nation.  Because the entire nation was guilty: guilty of hurting women or guilty of failing to protect them.

God punished the nation for failing to protect the woman.  For failing to protect women.

We don’t even know the name of the Levite’s concubine because none of them remembered.

They stepped over her.

Just like we do.

We do what we want, when we want, with whom we want.  We worship our freedom and so we worship our power.  We can so we do. And in a culture where power is an idol, the powerless are stepped on and stepped over.

In the story of the Levite’s concubine, the nation didn’t repent of its rape-culture.  The nation didn’t mourn a society so divorced from its Biblical roots (i.e. the Mosaic law) that sexual brutality had become entertainment.  The people of God didn’t consider why it took the visual of a woman’s chopped up body for them to respond to what had been going on in Gibeah for years.

They stepped over her.

Just like we do.

We post, like, comment, and share the viral stories of crimes against women over there.  But we avert our eyes to the bruised faces in our congregations.  We step over her.

She need us, she needs me, to fight for her while she still has breath, while she still has her innocence, while she still has a chance.   No more laughing at old men making vulgar jokes about little girls.  No more telling sisters that God wants them to reconcile with their abuser more than God wants their abuser to stop abusing.    No more having somewhere else I have to be more than I need to be getting her help.

I know it's not culturally acceptable to get involved, but this culture is broken, so why should I accept its ideas of acceptability?

I know that everybody makes their own choices, but as a Christian I don't get to use personal freedom as a cover for being evil and enabling evil.  As free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. (1 Peter 2: 16) 

It's time for the church to stop conforming to this broken, hyper-sexualized, lust-driven, rape-culture. 

We serve the God-Who-Sees, so we have to open our eyes.

No more invisible women.  

No more stepping over our sisters.  

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064